Christopher Chidsey

Biography

Professor Chidsey’s research interests lie in electrochemistry and electrocatalysis, and in building the chemical base for molecular electronics. He has investigated the role of chemical bonding in promoting long-distance electron tunneling across interfaces and contributed to the development of silicon and germanium surface chemistry, including the self-assembly of complex molecular monolayers on silicon. Today his lab develops molecular systems, analytical tools and theoretical approaches to understand electron transfer between electrodes and among redox species, with applications in sustainable battery technology, fuel chemistry, and biochemical analysis. Born in 1957, Christopher Chidsey studied chemistry at Dartmouth College (A.B. 1978) and physical chemistry at Stanford University (Ph.D. 1983). After postdoctoral work in electrochemistry with Royce Murray at the University of North Carolina, he joined the technical staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories, where he probed long-distance electron transfer across interfaces and contributed to developments in scanning tunneling microscopy, nonlinear optical materials and optical materials processing. He joined the Stanford Department of Chemistry as Associate Professor in 1992, and in 2009 was also appointed Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy. He has received the Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award and Bing and Hertz Foundation fellowships, and was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Research Interest

The Chidsey group research interest is to build the chemical base for molecular electronics. To accomplish this, we synthesize the molecular and nanoscopic systems, build the analytical tools and develop the theoretical understanding with which to study electron transfer between electrodes and among redox species through insulating molecular bridges. Members of the group have synthesized several series of saturated and conjugated oligomers with which we have studied the fundamental aspects of electron tunneling through well-defined molecular bridges. The oligophenylenevinylene bridge of these molecules promotes rapid tunneling over remarkably long distances compared with other unsaturated and saturated bridges we have studied. For instance, starting in the activated complex, the tunneling rate between a gold electrode and an appended ferrocene through 3.5nm of an oligophenylenevinylene (OPV) bridge is 8 x 109 s-1 whereas the tunneling rate through an alkane bridge of the same length is expected to be slower than 1s-1